The Dreaming Suburb (4 page)

It was no use, however, and after a time Harold resigned himself to seeing Eunice alone, in his office in St. Paul's Churchyard, or in an ABC teashop during her bi-weekly excursions up West.

That first summer he made some sort of progress with her. He knew that she trusted and respected him, that she thought he had a wonderful head for figures, and limitless capacity to serve, but somehow these things were not what one wanted from a twenty-seven-year-old client, who had a disturbing habit of laying her tiny hand on the back of your own, of looking right into one's eyes and whispering: “I do
envy
you, Harold! You have such a wonderful
grasp
of things!”

At times like these poor Harold Godbeer, thirty-five and still virginal, longed to grasp something less crackly than a bundle of share certificates and a mortgage deed.

For Esme, however, the move brought vast compensations.
Within a fortnight of moving into the Avenue he had explored far afield, and was delighted with his discoveries. Hitherto his experience of the countryside was limited to Green Park, Kensington Gardens, part of Hyde Park, and the Serpentine. Now, within a few minutes of his front gate, he had the Manor fields, the Manor Woods, the vast plough-land along the Kent border, and, in other directions, the “Rec”, the Lane, the Links, and the mysterious adandoned Nursery on which his bedroom window looked.

The summer of 1919 was very hot, one of the hottest and longest on record. Week after week the sun beat down on brown grass and drooping, dust-laden hedgerows. In the early mornings the thrushes and blackbirds sang for joy in the thickets, and a riot of daisies, buttercups, speedwell, and viper's bugloss rolled away from the very pavement-edges of the Avenue, towards the cool rhododendron clumps on the fringe of the Manor woods.

Inside the woods it was solemn and mysterious, and so quiet, in the long, hazy afternoons, that Esme could sometimes hear the woodpecker hammering away at a trunk on the far side of the reed-grown fishpond. There were always dead leaves here, that rustled pleasantly as he scuffled along the bramble-grown paths, and sometimes, when a light breath of air struck the top of the woods, the huge boughs quivered and sighed, and the filtered sunbeams danced across the thickets and were suddenly still again.

There were hundreds of brilliant butterflies out here, butterflies Esme had so far only peered at in fly-blown cases in shop-windows, Red Admirals, Peacocks, Tortoiseshells, and common Blues. By June the bluebells were nearly over, but their scent lingered, and every now and again he came upon great clumps of nodding foxgloves, or a low, ivy-matted bank, starred with periwinkles.

The smell of the countryside became for Esme almost tangible that summer, a smell of cut grass, and crushed hyacinth; of turned earth, and distant wood fires; of cottages, farm manure, boiling tar, and a thousand things growing under the fierce sun, and towards evening, when he came out of the woods, and crossed the buttercup meadow to the Avenue, he heard, for the first time, the summer evening
orchestra of the suburbs, the low, pleasant whine of lawn-mowers, the chink of watering-can and spade, the scuffle of unlaced garden boots on cinder path and concrete, and the metallic snick-snack of hand-shears, hard at work on unruly privet. He opened his heart to it all and was happy, happy to look, to sniff, to sense, to absorb. It almost spoiled his pleasure when he reflected that he owed his presence here to Mr. Godbeer, who had now, alas, become “Uncle Harold”.

2

It had been late May when the Frasers first came to Number Twenty-Two, and Eunice decided to take Mr. Godbeer's advice, and enter Esme at Elstone College, in the main road. The College was by no means as important an establishment as it sounds, being a small private school of some eighty boys, who were housed, with four or five unqualified staff, in a large three-storey house occupying an enclosed garden at the corner of Hayseed Road.

The summer term was well advanced by late May, and by the time Eunice had visited the school, and signed the entrance forms made out by Mr. Godbeer, it was mid-June, and Esme easily persuaded her to delay his commencement until the September term. In the meantime he explored further and further afield, pushing along the paths that led through the heart of Manor Woods until, one airless noon, he came within sight of the Manor itself.

He stopped short against the crumbling stone balustrade that bordered the overgrown lawn. As he came upon it suddenly, from the deep shade of the woods, its impact was considerable, for it was huge, rambling, and awesomely empty. Once white, its porticoed façade was now a dirty grey. Plaster was falling away from the cornices, and the woodwork of the window-panes was rotting. Some of its first-floor windows were broken, and all were cob-webbed, and thick with grime. The outhouses were beginning to fall in, and some of the garden ornaments that bordered the terrace had been overturned and chipped. Broken flower-pots littered the weed-sprouting drive, and festoons of ivy, honeysuckle, and
red creeper were climbing right across its face, in some cases half obscuring the shattered, upstairs windows.

There was a small lake within a stone's throw of the porch, its surface thick with water-lilies. In the middle of the lake was a tiny islet, studded with silver birches, and through them Esme could just glimpse the roof of a summer-house.

What struck him most forcibly about the ruin was the quiet that surrounded it, a quiet so different from that of the woods, a quiet that seemed to have endured for a century, as though the last carriage wheels to crunch that weed-grown forecourt, were those in the days of the Prince Regent and Beau Brummel. It was an eerie, man-made quiet; sad, deliberate, and very frightening to an imaginative child of eight.

He was standing there wondering if he could ever have the courage to climb the balustrade, and peep through the windows, when he heard a twig crack immediately behind him. He wheeled around poised to flee, back through the woods, across the field, and into the Avenue, away from this eerie stillness to the safety of people and houses.

Then he relaxed, for it was only a child, a girl about his own age, and as she picked her way over the straggling briars towards him, he recognised her as the girl from next door, the girl whose mother's funeral he had watched a week or two ago.

She was wearing a neat, cotton frock, of red checks, with little puffy sleeves that bunched out above her elbows. She had no stockings but wore a pair of open sandals, and he saw that her legs were scratched, and that one long scratch had been bleeding.

She did not appear to share his awe of the great blind house, for she smiled, and in smiling showed fleeting dimples. She obviously recognised him, and took it for granted that he would be glad of her company, for she said, by way of an introduction:

“I followed you. I've been meaning to ever since I got the holiday. You come here every day, don't you? I see you across the field. I can see from our bedroom. Once I saw you go early, while I was dressing. I've never been this far before, but Berni and Boxer have; it was them who broke some of the windows.”

A sudden shyness fell upon him, induced, perhaps, by the shamelessness of her admission regarding her brothers' vandalism. He looked down at his shoes and kicked hard at a beech root that had bored under the wall, and was making a wide crack in which dandelions had seeded.

Her air of assurance suddenly left her, and she became anxious.

“You don't
mind
me following you, do you? You see, you've only just come, haven't you, and I knew you wouldn't know anyone. You don't hate girls, do you?”

His silence restored her confidence.

“Berni and Boxer do,” she went on; “they hardly ever let me play, except when they want a squaw, but I don't mind really. They always play rough games, not ‘house', and things like that. I like ‘house', don't you?”

“I don't know,” said Esme, at last, glad to be able to answer one question without committing himself.

“You don't?” She seemed very surprised. Then she smiled reassuringly. “Oh, but you wouldn't, would you? You're an ‘only'.”

“An ‘only'?” he queried.

“An only child. There's seven of us. Mum had twins just before she died. Louise says that's partly what killed her. I don't seen why, but that's what Louise says. Louise is my sister. She looks after us. They're home now—the twins, I mean—and Dad's coming soon. I'm going to take them out in the pram when we get one; Louise said I could.”

She looked speculatively at the tangled path behind her. “They'd be wonderful for ‘house',
real
babies, but I don't suppose we could get them here, the pram would get all tangled up. I could bring dolls, tho'; I've got all my dolls, right back to ‘Inky'. ‘Inky's' the nigger boy I had years and years ago. I've got nine altogether.”

“I come here exploring,” said Esme, very firmly. He thought it essential to establish, once and for all, that a dispatch-rider for Prince Rupert, or a missionary in search of a lost tribe to convert, could not reasonably be expected to waste his valuable time playing dolls with a strange girl. He began to suspect; moreover, that a game of ‘house'—
whatever it was—would involve dolls as its principal stage properties.

The girl was not put out by the implied rebuff.

“What's your name? Mine's Judith. I know yours is Fraser, but what else? Is it David?”

“No,” said Esme heavily. “It's Esme. Why should it be David?”

“Esme.” She savoured it and nodded. “It's nice, but not as nice as David. David's my favourite boy's name, because David is my favourite Bible person. You know about David, don't you?”

“Of course,” said Esme, a little shocked that she should be so ready to put him among the heathen. “I like David too, because he could sling. Can
you
sling?”

“No,” said the girl; “show me.”

Delighted at the prospect of proving his manhood so easily, and so promptly, he took out the unused handkerchief that his mother had placed in his pocket that morning, folded it like a bandage, found and placed a heavy pebble in the crease, and whirled the sling three times round his head, before suddenly releasing the shorter fold.

The pebble went straight over his shoulder and struck a beech tree immediately behind them. He began to flush before it hit the ground, but Judith had brothers and knew enough about the male to refrain from comment.

“That's spiffing,” she commented; “I bet that would have sunk into Goliath's head if he'd been standing there.”

Esme felt himself warming towards her.

He nodded towards the silent house. “Shall we go in?” he said, surprised at his own recklessness.

She was a realist. Vigorously she shook her head, and her chestnut curls bobbed.

“It's too creepy. Even Berni and Boxer have never gone inside. Besides,” she added more comfortably, “it's all locked up.”

“Damnation!” said Esme very deliberately. Sir Eustace, swash-buckling exiled Royalist in the book he was now reading invariably exclaimed “Damnation!” when thwarted, and for almost a week Esme had been longing to use the expression in front of a safe audience. The audience-reaction was
not remarkable. He was not to know that Boxer, the girl's bullet-headed brother, habitually used a somewhat stronger-expletive.

“We'll have a look around, anyway,” he compromised, adding: “and you needn't be afraid when we do go in, because then I'll be armed. When we get home,” he promised, “I'll take you into our back lavatory and show you.” When Judy did not respond to this unconventional invitation, he gave her a sidelong look and added, “The back lavatory is my armoury. Mum said I could use it; it's far too dirty to go in!”

They moved around to where the coping was broken, and whilst she still hesitated he jumped down into the forecourt, and turning, held out his arms as an encouragement to her to follow.

She jumped immediately, and her expression, when he caught and steadied her, intoxicated him. In her unwavering eyes and parted lips he read her complete acceptance of him, not merely as a protective male, but as a hero, straight out of the pages of one of his books. He began to swagger, and as they crossed the court to the margin of the lake, he made sudden darts and thrusts with his left hand, sometimes turning aside to do it, but more often keeping his stern gaze immediately ahead.

“Why do you do that?” she asked presently.

“Do what?” he asked, with mock surprise.

“Jab at things ... like that—” and she made an inexpert attempt to imitate him.

“Oh
that
!” His tone implied that the movement should not have had to be explained. “That's sword-play, just to get you used to sudden ambuscades!”

Her dark brows met, and she made no immediate reply, but when they reached the dilapidated gazebo, opposite the island, she asked:

“Is an ambuscade an illness?”

He stopped short, and regarded her with genuine pity. Then he laughed outright. After all, she was only a girl, who didn't know enough to avoid getting her legs clawed by black-berry shoots.

“An ambuscade,” he explained patiently, “is a sudden attack
from an alley. They come at you all the time, 'specially after dark, and always,” he added with dark emphasis, “always when you're carrying dispatches!”

“Oh,” said the girl, and was content to leave it at that. Something in the studied patience of his voice warned her not to enquire further into the nature of this exciting creature's present mission, and the risks she obviously ran in accompanying him.

She stood silently beside him, and looked across the shallow lake to the islet.

“That,” he pronounced, “would be a wonderful place to get wrecked on!”

She gave him a quick, nervous glance. She had heard Boxer tell of a boathouse, and a punt on the lake shore, and Esme was obviously the sort of boy who, once he was aware of this fact, would insist on her joining him in a journey across open water. She had never been on water, and never wanted to; it was enough, for the moment, to be alone with him, in the huge, brooding presence of the eyeless Manor.

He kept his eyes fixed on the islet so hungrily that she decided to divert his thoughts into a safe backwater.